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Nima Nadali
31st May 2023
Emerging from the need for a simple and efficient tool for web development, PHP has grown to become one of the world's most widely adopted server-side scripting languages. Its history is one of innovation, driven by a dedicated community of developers and marked by its evolution to meet the changing needs of the digital world.
PHP, standing for Hypertext Preprocessor, was conceived in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf. Lerdorf initially developed PHP to manage his personal website and to track visits to his online CV. The first incarnation, known as Personal Home Page/Forms Interpreter (PHP/FI), was a set of Common Gateway Interface (CGI) binaries written in C.
Due to the growing need for efficient web development tools, Lerdorf released PHP/FI to the public in 1995 to garner improvements from the development community. PHP/FI could communicate with databases, enabling the creation of simple, dynamic web applications.
In 1997, two Israeli developers, Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, rewrote the parser of PHP/FI and launched PHP 3. This version saw a significant expansion of PHP's abilities, introducing a more consistent language syntax and structure. The name 'Hypertext Preprocessor' was adopted to reflect PHP's growing capabilities.
PHP 4 was launched in 2000, introducing the Zend Engine, a scripting engine designed by Suraski and Gutmans. This update allowed PHP to compete with other established languages, offering improved speed, reliability, and support for a wider range of web servers and databases.
The introduction of PHP 5 in 2004 represented a step-change in PHP's evolution. Its object-oriented programming was vastly improved, bringing greater flexibility and enabling the creation of more complex applications. Crucial features, such as enhanced exception handling, data abstraction via PDO, and improved XML and SOAP support, made PHP 5 a popular choice for developers.
In 2015, PHP made a leap to PHP 7, skipping version 6. PHP 7 brought substantial performance improvements and a reduced memory footprint, increasing its appeal for modern web application development. Features such as scalar type declarations, return type declarations, and the null coalescing operator, marked PHP 7 as a significant milestone.
In 2020, PHP 8 was launched, introducing an array of new features and optimizations including named arguments, attributes, union types, and the Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler. This advancement continues to expand PHP's capabilities, ensuring it remains a powerful tool for modern web development.
From humble beginnings, PHP has grown to become a cornerstone of web development, shaped by a dedicated community of developers, and always adapting to meet the needs of the digital landscape.